eBay seller software is only worth the cost if it provides high return on investment. Plenty of programs do—research, shipping, and inventory management tools can easily pay for themselves. But one type of software will pay off better than any other: a helpdesk.

How can a helpdesk possibly make such a big difference? Let me show you:

1. You Can’t Provide Professional Customer Service in My Messages

The standard eBay messaging system, My Messages, is as spartan as a jail cell. Beyond an Out of Office reply option, you have next to no tools at hand. That means you have to write out every answer individually.

Worse, it’s not designed for a team. You get one login and one password. If you want to hire a customer service agent, you have to give them access to the entirety of your eBay account.

There’s also zero accountability if you have several agents. You’ll never know for sure who sent that nasty reply that got you negative feedback.

A helpdesk can fix all these problems at once.

2. Great Customer Service Boosts Feedback

Everyone knows that you need a great eBay Feedback score if you want to make sales. The better your Feedback score, the more likely each viewer will become a bidder or buyer.

Customer service agents who are sick of repeating themselves will get sloppy and impatient. And the longer they spend answering one message, the longer it will be until they get to answer the next. The long waits and unprofessional responses can easily earn you negative reviews.

With the right helpdesk, you can avoid those problems and send your Feedback score rocketing into orbit.

3. Better Service Means Better Search Rankings

Customer service affects eBay SEO as strongly as the moon influences the tides. Most directly, you can only become an eBay Top Rated Seller if you provide great support, and TRS status gives you an enormous boost in the search results. And when your high Feedback score converts more viewers into watchers, bidders, and buyers, eBay will rank your listings even higher for high engagement.

How Will a Helpdesk Do All That?

1. By Making Support WAY Easier

Manage your eBay customer service on the same screen where you answer messages from Amazon, social media, and your own website.

Create canned responses and enter them with a click.

Automatically fill in details that need to be customized for each message, like the buyer’s name.

Automate just about any process that doesn’t require human interaction.

That’s barely scratching the surface. But these features alone will take an enormous amount of stress off your support team, and let them answer questions in a fraction of the time they used to need. That means your customers get better answers faster.

2. By Improving Security and Accountability

As mentioned above, giving your login to your staff greatly reduces your eBay security and makes it impossible to tell which agent sent which message. Using a helpdesk fixes both problems.

With a helpdesk, you don’t have to give your login out. Each agent gets their own unique username and password. They answer your eBay messages from within the helpdesk and never need to log in to eBay directly.

That means your login details are safe with you. And on top of that, you get to see exactly which agent wrote which answer. Management becomes easier and safer at the same time.

3. By Providing Management with Crucial Data

The improved accountability already makes a manager’s job much easier. A good helpdesk will also provide insights into your support team’s performance, giving performance stats for both the group and individual agents, plus customer satisfaction data.

You might only get this kind of reporting with a premium account, but it’s worth it if you have a big team! You can quickly assess who deserves a raise and who might be a better fit for another company.

Why Will the ROI Be Higher than with Other eBay Software?

Quality helpdesks are not free, but they provide some of the best return on investment of any kind of eBay software. Let’s sum up the reasons:

As you can see, a helpdesk will chase away your costs and send your eBay sales flying high.

Which Helpdesks Work Well as eBay Seller Software?

Two leading helpdesks have successfully integrated with eBay: Zendesk and Desk.com. Both provide the features we’ve discussed in this article and can be complete game changers for any eBay seller. Compare their features in our article on using them to manage eBay messages and discover which one works best for your business!

"ChannelReply has allowed us to increase the productivity of
our customer service department by consolidating the messaging
from multiple marketplaces directly into Zendesk. As with most
retail businesses, we sell on multiple online channels.
Streamlining customer interactions from these marketplaces
has been crucial to both our customers' experience and our growth.
ChannelReply has done a wonderful job in developing and supporting
this functionality."

JC Webster

COO, Chicago Music Exchange

"ChannelReply has allowed us to integrate multiple eBay and Amazon accounts
into Zendesk creating accountability and making it easy to scale our marketplace
customer service. Without ChannelReply it would be unmanageable to provide the
level of satisfaction our customers expect out of Golfio.
The integration with the eBay and Amazon messaging API is tight and we
couldn't be happier!"

Howard Choi

Business Dev Manager Golfio

"Given the various standards of service that apply, managing multiple marketplace
channels is a challenge to any organization. ChannelReply has given us the ability
to organize our inquries to maximize turnaround and increase our efficiency when
handling our marketplace requests. We look forward to additional features ChannelReply is offering that will only increase our ability to service our customers
across channels."